Read Chapter 26: The Bait

The Artemis rode low in the water, her hull groaning against the tow lines as the Remora dragged her toward the mouth of the bay. Elias stood at the helm of the tug, salt spray stinging his eyes, watching the derelict research vessel's silhouette darken against the gray dawn. She had been a ghost ship once, clawed open by something no man had named. Now she was bait.

Aiko's voice crackled over the radio. "Charges are set. Eight along the waterline, two in the engine room. I've wired the detonator to a remote frequency, but you'll need to be within half a mile for the signal to reach."

Elias keyed the mic. "Copy. What about the decoys?"

"Pumping the ballast tanks now. She'll sit deep and quiet, like she's dead in the water. Heat signatures from the engine block should read as minimal life support. If this thing hunts by sound or heat, she'll look like a wounded animal."

"Good work." Elias cut the transmission and turned to Hart, who stood beside him in the wheelhouse, her arms wrapped around herself against the cold. She hadn't slept in over a day. Neither had he. The chronometer sat in a waterproof case at his feet, its low hum a constant reminder of the thing swimming toward them.

"You think it'll work?" she asked.

"It worked for the Aurora." The words came out flatter than he intended. "The creature came to her because of the frequencies she was broadcasting. Webb used the chronometer to lure it, to study it. Now we're using the same trick to kill it."

"Except the Artemis isn't broadcasting anything."

Elias shook his head. "She doesn't need to. The creature knows the chronometer is here. It's been tracking it since the Vault. Webb told me that much before the walls came down." He tapped the case with his boot. "This thing is a beacon. Long as I'm on this boat, the leviathan will come."

Hart's jaw tightened. "And when it does?"

"Then we pray Aiko's charges do what Webb's cage couldn't."

The bay opened ahead of them, a narrow wedge of water carved into the jagged coastline of an uninhabited island, ringed by cliffs that rose thirty feet above the surf. It was a natural funnel, deep enough for a ship of the Artemis's size but tight enough that a creature of the leviathan's bulk would have nowhere to turn. Elias had scouted it from the submersible's charts, and the naval exclusion zone sat just beyond the headland, a line of buoys that guaranteed no civilian traffic would stumble into their fight.

It was the only piece of luck he'd had in a year.

"Slow to two knots," Elias ordered. "Let her drift into the center of the bay. I want the Artemis to look like she's abandoned, not moored."

The deckhand on the tow line acknowledged, and the Artemis slid forward, her bow cutting a gentle wake through the choppy water. Elias watched her go, feeling the familiar ache in his chest. He'd salvaged ships like her for most of his adult life, pulled them from the deep, stripped them for parts, sold their bones to scrap men who'd never seen the ocean. But this one had a crew once. Scientists. Researchers. People with names and families who'd gone to sea on a Meridian paycheck and never come home.

He'd lost a crew the same way. He knew what it meant to leave people behind.

"Lines cutting now," Aiko radioed. "Artemis is on her own. You want me to keep the Remora here or pull back?"

Elias stared at the derelict ship, sitting still and silent in the gray water. "Pull back to the mouth of the bay. Keep the engines running. If this goes sideways, I want us pointed at open water."

"And you?"

"I'm taking the skiff in. I'll trigger the charges from the water if I have to."

The silence on the radio stretched. Then Aiko's voice came back, harder than before. "You're not doing this alone, Captain."

"The hell I'm not. Someone has to be close enough to see the thing take the bait. If it doesn't, we need to know where it's going."

"Then I'm coming with you."

Elias opened his mouth to argue, but Hart cut him off. "She's right. You need a second pair of hands on the detonator, and I need to stay with the chronometer. If the creature changes course, I can adjust the frequency to draw it back."

He didn't like it. He didn't like any of it. But the bay was already growing darker, the sun hidden behind a bank of clouds rolling in from the east, and the hydrophone had gone silent for the first time in hours. The creature was out there, somewhere beyond the headland, waiting.

"Fine. Aiko, get to the skiff. Bring the harpoon."

The hours crawled by. Elias and Aiko crouched in the skiff, bobbing in the shadow of the Artemis's hull, the detonator case open between them. The sea was still, unnaturally so. No birds cried over the cliffs. No fish broke the surface. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath, as if the whole island knew what was coming.

"She's close," Aiko whispered. She had the hydrophone's earpiece pressed to her skull, her eyes closed in concentration. "I hear it. Low frequency, like a ship's engine but deeper. It's circling."

Elias scanned the water. Nothing but gray swells and the dark shape of the Artemis. "Where?"

"Can't tell. The sound's bouncing off the cliffs. It's confusing the array." She pulled the earpiece out and shook her head. "It's not coming in. It knows something's wrong."

"Or it's just cautious. Webb's notes said it was cunning, but it still went for the Aurora."

"That was a ship full of people broadcasting a distress signal." Aiko gestured at the Artemis. "This is a dead hulk. No life signs. No movement. What's it supposed to be hunting?"

Elias looked at the chronometer case in the bottom of the skiff. He'd left the real one with Hart, but he had a decoy, a stripped-down transmitter he'd rigged from the submersible's comms unit. It was pulsing the same frequency, a low thrum that vibrated through the hull of the skiff.

"Me," he said. "It's hunting me."

Aiko's eyes widened. "Captain—"

The first wave hit them sideways, rocking the skiff hard enough to nearly throw them both into the water. Elias grabbed the gunwale and looked up. The sea beyond the Artemis's stern had begun to churn, a roiling boil of white foam and dark water that spread like a wound in the ocean's skin.

Then the creature broke the surface.

It was bigger than he remembered. Bigger than the Vault, bigger than the nightmares that had clawed at his sleep for a year. Its body was a mountain of black scale and scarred flesh, ridged with fins that caught the pale light like blades of obsidian. Its head alone was the size of the Remora's hull, jaws lined with teeth that had sheared through steel like paper. And its eyes—yellow, ancient, burning with an intelligence that made Elias's blood run cold—were fixed on the skiff.

"Now," he shouted. "Hit the charges!"

Aiko's hand slammed down on the detonator.

Nothing.

The creature's head turned, slow and deliberate, toward the Artemis. It circled the derelict ship once, its massive body displacing enough water to send the skiff pitching wildly. Then it stopped, its eyes sliding past the hulk to settle on the two small figures cowering in the rubber boat.

It knew.

The Artemis wasn't the bait.

They were.